Down to the wire: results from the final UT/Texas Politics Project Poll before Election Day

Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm.

At what point must a female senator Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Well, if you’re listening to this, you probably know we released our final University of Texas, Texas Politics Project poll of the 2024 election. Uh, cycle last Friday, uh, and today’s podcast will be about what those results can tell us about the overall trajectory of the campaign in Texas.

Um, as we record this late Tuesday morning, early voting got underway in the state yesterday. If you’re one of the people declaring, uh, historic early voting turnout, I would suggest maybe wait for the numbers, but hey, just a hunch. Um, We are, uh, exactly two weeks away from election day and I won’t, I won’t sing the Leonard Cohen song, but I will say I, I’m hearing, uh, hallelujah in my head, um, uh, among other things, as is our custom, uh, you know, the screaming of the lambs being one of them.

Yeah. Um, As is our custom, I’m happy to be joined today by Darren Shaw, professor of government here at the University of Texas at Austin, co founder of our polling project here. Uh, are you getting any sleep? These days, Professor Shaw? No, big Jim.

[00:01:55] Daron Shaw: In fact, I am not. You had that look about you. I’m running on Jolt a Cola and, uh, and, uh, democracy.

Our, our, our,

[00:02:03] Jim Henson: our, our once colleague, Joe Tenbar, just look at me sometimes and go, you got the look of the hunted. And he was pretty good at catching that. Um, and of course by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. You look reasonably well rested.

[00:02:19] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know?

[00:02:21] Jim Henson: Even though you just walked in going, isn’t it five o’clock already?

[00:02:24] Josh Blank: Well, you know, I was thinking that, no, it’s funny, and I was telling Darren, you know, I had like a little person throw up on me last night, that’s my child, but it’s sort of like, I’m like, Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you know, it could be worse, right? I’m not being thrown

[00:02:35] Jim Henson: up on a little puke to spice up the exhaustion.

Hey,

[00:02:40] Josh Blank: you know, you know what they say? Love is the suspension of disgust.

[00:02:43] Jim Henson: Well, okay.

[00:02:46] Josh Blank: Thanks, Matt.

[00:02:46] Jim Henson: Have you been watching industry? Um, all right. Anyway. All right. So, so let’s, let’s look at the polling and if we just spiral off too far, I spiral off too far. Uh, and let’s start with the presidential race. Josh.

Yeah. As is. custom. Why don’t you give us the bullet on the top lines and maybe what we see in the party ID tabs, too. If you got that handy.

[00:03:06] Josh Blank: Yeah, sure. So overall, I should say real quick, we did jump to a likely voter screen. We’ve been talking about this a lot throughout the election cycle. We’ve been relying on registered voters and we could, you know, talk about why that’s the case.

Ultimately, you know, as we’re kind of commenting amongst ourselves before this podcast, you know, asking an attitudinal question about the likelihood to vote to people in the party February, let’s say of an election year can be a little bit,

[00:03:30] Jim Henson: even August really,

[00:03:31] Josh Blank: it can be, you know, I’d say, I think it can be a little bit silly.

And historically we have not done likely voter screens until the October poll, which is what we did here. So two things. So one, we’re looking at likely voters. When this case means people who tell us that they vote in every or almost every election. So the people who historically vote regularly, big predictor voting, or those people who say on a 10 point scale rating, their own likelihood to vote, that they are a nine or 10.

Absolutely certain to vote kind of voter and that way we get the people who maybe don’t have as consistent of a voting history But express that they are definitely voting in this and we

[00:04:01] Jim Henson: should flag that we know there are lots of different ways to do this There’s a you know, this is a combination of you know technique style.

[00:04:08] Josh Blank: Yeah, I would say honestly, you know not to you know Promote myself here, but if you search my name and likely voter in texas You can find a lot of writing and interviews and stuff on this topic and how we can think about it and talk about it And there’s other stuff out there too. But if you’re interested in the texas context, uh, that would be that would be what i’d look at Okay, so as I said, you know, we’re looking at likely voters here overall.

Oh, and there’s a force also That’s the other thing about this So because we are going to have voters in the voting booth now if someone says to us on our first trial ballot question Maybe they’re not sure how they’re going to vote yet Well, if you say you’re likely a voter you’re going to show up. We want to see Simulate being the voting booth.

So then we say, no, but really, who are you going to vote for from the named candidates in this race? Right. And then it’s, we combine the results of the people who told us initially who they’d vote for with the votes of those people who basically their second, you know, the choices will inevitably

[00:04:57] Jim Henson: refer to as the force, the

[00:04:58] Josh Blank: force.

Exactly.

[00:04:59] Jim Henson: Not to be confused with, you know, The force

[00:05:02] Josh Blank: not that force. Okay. So overall with all those caveats I knew a star

[00:05:06] Jim Henson: wars joke would make Darren smile a little reference. Let’s make Darren smile a little i’m

[00:05:11] Daron Shaw: Reference to life as we used to know it It’s not working,

[00:05:16] Josh Blank: okay, so to move on then Top of the ticket, we see Trump leading Harris 51 to 46.

So a five point advantage and Trump is over that magical 50 percent number, you know, we’re seeing overwhelming partisan support. So among Republicans, 95 percent say they will be 95 percent Republican. Likely voters say that we voting for Trump. 96 percent of likely Democratic voters say they’ll be voting for Harris.

Key group here. Independence breaks slightly for Harris 44 35. Um, you know, we could jump into some other subgroups here, but let me just, you know, I think that’s about how deep we want to start,

[00:05:49] Jim Henson: right? So at that, Darren, first cut, what do you, what do you make of this and, you know, where do you put this in the arc of the race, the arc of Texas, you know?

[00:05:58] Daron Shaw: I think it’s a, you know, as we’ve all talked about, it’s a continuation of a long, you know, kind of slow movement or erosion, I guess, of the Republican dominance in the state. It’s, uh, you know, not going to make people who want to turn Texas blue, um, immediately very happy. Yeah. Um, you know, and it probably won’t make, uh, MAGA inclined folks very happy either.

Um, and I, I think it’s, it’s interesting because Trump has so dominated political culture and, and, you know, the environment to the last eight years that sometimes it’s difficult to, to keep your eye on these long trending secular. You know, tendencies that we have in the state and, and kind of parse out what’s, what’s kind of real, what’s on the, uh, you know, what’s on the trend line versus what’s anomalous.

And, you know, I, I think our poll has been pretty, uh, consistent over the course of this cycle. Um, you know, we don’t see Trump in a lot of trouble here. Um, you know, on the other hand, uh, Trump is not getting what native son George W. Bush got or dominant Republican candidates in the past. Or even Mitt Romney.

Yeah, yeah. Just, you know. I’ve, I’ve made the case for a while back and I think, I think you guys agree that Trump’s not a particularly good fit. For Texas, um, the, the sort of style and appeal that he has, it, it has some ance with Republicans here, but, um, not as much as it does say in the upper Midwest where, you know, Repub people who’ve previously not been Republican are now Republican or at least voting such, uh, in Texas.

You know, he’s just sort of a, in some ways a mediocre Republican presidential candidate. Um, and I think that’s what you see in the data on the other end is Josh mentioned, there’s basically zero defection and with zero partisan defection, Democrats don’t win in Texas. Um, and, and so that’s the fundamental problem for Harris.

We talked a while back about, and we can talk about this in the context of the Senate races that are out there. Um, you know, if you’re a Democrat and you’re really looking to be aggressive, would you make a play here? And I think the answer is no. Um, and in the context of the Senate race, which we’ll get to, I think the data I’ve seen coming out of Florida and maybe even Nebraska suggest that if I’m at the, you know, if I’m at the DSCC, uh, thinking about where I want to spend party money, I think Texas would probably be number three on my list of, opportunities right now.

Um, even though I understand the Nebraska candidate is technically not a Democrat, but the Nebraska. Well, you got to take what

[00:08:29] Josh Blank: you can get. Yeah,

[00:08:30] Jim Henson: exactly. Um, Josh, you were talking about subgroups. What are you noticing here? I mean, you know, maybe move us into that a little bit because I am curious what Darren thinks about, you know, some of these subgroup totals, not, not only what we’re seeing, but the, the caveats around them.

[00:08:46] Josh Blank: Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously there’s some groups in the electorate we’re really interested in. I mean, I think, you know, we’ve talked kind of at length about how a lot has been made in this election cycle about, you know, the preferences of African American voters. And, you know, by all accounts, I think in this poll, based on what I’ve seen in previous October polls, I don’t really see a lot of defection here.

I mean, we’re seeing 85 percent of African American voters or 84 percent saying they’re going to vote for Harris, 15 percent for Trump. We’ll see if that really manifests, you know, or whether that gets a little bit better. Uh, wider, but I also kind of feel like that seems pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in the past, you know, young people have come back to Harris, you know, 58 38 for the, you know, under 29 group.

I think I think I mean, just to be honest about the mechanics here, you have to think the June poll. We got a little bit of an outlier with that young sample in there. Maybe, maybe not,

[00:09:31] Jim Henson: you know, it’s a,

[00:09:32] Josh Blank: it’s a large, large margin of error, you know, small

[00:09:35] Jim Henson: sample size, small

[00:09:37] Daron Shaw: number in that cell under, under 30 is roughly 15, 16 percent of the Texas electorate.

Right? So if we’re doing a 1200 person sample, right, you know, you’re, you’re talking about, you know, upwards of a hundred. So we, we report those numbers. We report basically all of them, but we emphasize it’s a little rule of thumb. You got to be in triple digits. Don’t post any inferences, uh, or anything, in terms of interviews before Josh or Jim or I will say anything real, really meaningful about it.

Commit. Right, exactly. So, but even 100 with the June poll with younger voters, but not by much. And um, so you, you got not only a low sample size issue, but you have an elect, that takes segment, the electorate is the most volatile.

[00:10:16] Josh Blank: Yeah. And that’s also, I mean, just, this is something I’ve sort of, you know, I’ve been talking to people a lot here, but, you know, I think it’s really, I mean, it seems to me in some ways I was thinking about this, you know, talking about Trump’s effect on politics.

And this might get a little bit askew from this result, but it’s sort of an interesting thing to me. It’s just, you know, in some ways there’s sort of been like, I think an engagement polarization also, right. Where you’ve got people who are engaged in politics getting engaged Hyper engaged when you think about, you know, again, a lot of calls today about turnout in the early voting.

Like I think for some people in texas and elsewhere people who watch cable news all the time the people who’ve just been Following this race, you know to I mean as close as maybe we are, you know, they’re ready to vote They’re ready to vote for tomorrow, right? They’re ready to vote immediately and I think you’re seeing that and there’s a lot of people who are just turned off by this right and And I think that matters for us.

And I think this is kind of why we want to be careful, especially in the summer and the spring before the election to sort of not draw these really broad conclusions. I think a lot of people sort of look at, you know, politics because they tell us and they’re disgusted by it and they don’t want to really get involved in it.

But all of a sudden, now you start talking about it. We’re in the fall, you’re watching your college football, you’re watching the Dallas Cowboys, and you know what you’re seeing, you’re seeing Colin Allred as, and you’re seeing Ted Cruz as, and now that 80 million dollars that everybody’s pouring in, and the extra, you know, 5 or 10 that the Democrats are going to pour in, it’s all being spent right now.

Right. And they’re all being contacted right now. And so it’s not surprising to see, like, again, in this last poll, I think people sort of falling back into the patterns we kind of expect. And the difficult part in Texas, in some ways, is that the places where it’s competitive, it’s super competitive. The suburbs still look super competitive.

And, you know, so ultimately we see just ultimately, I think, within the margin is basically just kind of a toss up in those areas. We’ll see if that’s how it shakes out. Yeah. I don’t think it’s going to shake out that way. Yeah. Personally.

[00:11:53] Jim Henson: Our suburban numbers, which is how, you know, to the subsample size, you know, in this sample is about half the sample.

Uh, Trump plus five. Yeah. 51, 46. Which is, which

[00:12:02] Josh Blank: is the top of the ticket number.

[00:12:04] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:12:04] Daron Shaw: Yeah. Which is interesting. A couple small things on the subgroups. Um, the first is really stunning numbers amongst Latinos. Um, we, we actually have Trump with a very slight lead amongst Latinos. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that is such a sea change, um, you know, from where we were 15 years ago.

Um, and, and I think, uh, it’s, it’s again, this sort of complication. People who think demography is destiny and who have been predicting that Texas is going to move, uh, you know, in a leftward direction simply as a function of, you know, migration and birth rates and, and particularly Latino mobilization, um, well, guess what?

Politics intervenes. You know, it’s, it’s, you know, we don’t, we collectively, and I feel safe speaking for my colleagues here, politics are not static. Yeah. And, and so what you’re seeing in Texas is, you know, there is continued, what’s, what’s kind of striking in a lot of ways is the continued slow erosion of the Republican Dominance.

At the same time, a key element of the Democratic coalition is basically kind of moved to almost 50 50 at this point, at least in this cycle, at least this cycle, at least in the

[00:13:14] Josh Blank: cycle under these conditions. And I think that’s also your point about the static. It’s not not being static is the fact that, you know, again, as voters have tuned in, and I think we’ve Pulled, you know, throughout this election cycle, the main issue that they’re looking at our economic issues and the border, right?

And in Texas, that gives a clear advantage, you know, to trump because a clear advantage to Republicans. And I think that’s accruing to hispanic, you know, among hispanic voters in a way that, you know, we’ll see. I think what happens, you know, in a couple election cycles, I’m curious to see what, you know, whether this is representing a new norm, which I kind of doubt or whether but whether this is again, you know, I think I do love that point.

I just want I want to sit on because I think it is really interesting is the state is becoming more and more competitive. I think this is something that’s hard for people to understand kind of outside of Texas. That is, the state is becoming more competitive. It doesn’t mean that Democrats are necessarily running away with these constituencies.

Yeah, they’re not necessarily, you know, it’s not as though it’s because 75 Hispanic percent of Hispanics are voting for Democrats of anything, you know, what you’re seeing now is this is where the competition is taking place in the suburbs with this group of voters. with younger voters, honestly, because the state is changing.

But it’s not, it’s not, you know, these people enter the electorate and all of a sudden, well, now it’s, it’s a blue Texas, right?

[00:14:21] Daron Shaw: There’s a book written, I believe it’s published in 2004. It might be 2006 by Judas and Tishera, uh, John Judas and Roy Tishera about the emerging democratic majority. And it’s a play on the old Kevin Phillips book in the sixties, you know, the emerging Republican majority.

And I think if you would have. So if you would submit these cross tabs from our poll to those scholars, they would be stunned that their, their thesis is not necessarily wrong that, you know, the kind of demography of the country is changing the way that’s going to, in a way that will help the Democrats, but, the assumptions they had about democratic dominance amongst young people, democratic dominance amongst Latinos, and to a broader extent, liberational ethnic minorities.

That’s actually diminished and it’s diminished considerably, but it’s been offset by compensatory movement amongst these traditional constituencies, people with a college education, et cetera. The suburban point in Texas is really interesting to me because, um, in other parts of the country. Um, and actually in some parts of Texas, you get what, what I would refer to as the Northern Virginianization of the suburbs.

That is people fleeing the urban core to find affordable housing and better schools. And the, the, the notion that, and by the way, this is not to excuse Republican messaging and Republican policies, but the notion that, uh, Republicans have simply alienated these voters in the suburbs as if they’ve simply turned off all these suburban voters who are the same voters year after year is nonsense.

The, the main change in the suburbs is migration.

[00:15:55] Jim Henson: Yeah. It’s the composition of the suburbs. It’s the composition. Suburbs do not look like what they did. And

[00:15:59] Daron Shaw: again, it’s not to say that, uh, you know, Republican messaging on abortion hasn’t turned off suburban women. It’s to say that the notion that it’s been persuasion that’s going on in the suburbs, that’s what’s kind of made them more competitive, is not correct.

It’s you know, the Northern Virginianization, I think you see it most obviously in Texas, in Travis. Right, where Williamson, and Hayes, and Collins, yeah, Dallas used to be these bedrock Republican conservative areas, and they’re not anymore. But it’s not because those voters have suddenly become, you know, turned off from the Republicans, it’s that those voters aren’t the same voters anymore.

And

[00:16:34] Josh Blank: a lot of the, and a lot of the voters have moved into those areas, would have moved to DC or. Yeah. They’re not trying to get out of there. They’re, they are moving to what is being offered.

[00:16:44] Daron Shaw: And they bring their politics with them.

[00:16:46] Jim Henson: And the flip side of that, that’s interesting that I’ve been kind of noticing in some of our internals lately is that Democrats are hitting something of a ceiling in the urban areas.

[00:16:57] Josh Blank: It seems that way. Right.

[00:16:58] Jim Henson: And I, you know, I, I wouldn’t bet my life on that right now, but, but it kind of feels that way to me as I, as I look at these numbers a few times recently, looking at our numbers, looking at other, at other numbers, I’ve thought, shouldn’t that urban number for Democrats be a little higher?

And, but then when you look more closely and look back, well, maybe not. Right. Yeah. And I mean,

[00:17:17] Josh Blank: and I think this also speaks to some of the, you know, the difficulties of math, right? And I was talking with somebody about this recently, you say, you know, if, if, if, if Let’s just say, let’s say, for example, you know, there’s an extra, you know, 200, 000 voters have registered, let’s say, in Dallas County or whatever.

I’m just, I’m just making numbers up right now to be clear, right? You know, and you say, well, okay, how, you know, how democratic do you think Dallas County is? And let’s say you think it’s, you know, 60 percent Democrat County. Well, then they accrue about 20, 000 votes out of that. And that’s the whole thing.

People say, well, all these people are moving to Texas from these other states. Like, yeah, but, you know, okay, so if, you know, if 60 percent of them are Democrat, which is not what I see in the data anyway, as a separate question, then you say, okay, so if every 10 people. coming, Democrats might get one more vote if they all vote.

And that’s the thing, you know, about demographic change is that, you know, in addition to it being slow, part of the reasons it’s slow is because no group is entering as 100 percent Democrat or 100 percent Republican. People are coming to the suburbs. And even those people who are coming to the suburbs are not necessarily, you know, and even if they’re coming for because they’re young and they want all the things that the cities have to offer and urbanism and jobs and all It’s still not a hundred percent Democrats.

You’re still only accruing a few democratic votes out of every one of these people. And that’s why this is so slow.

[00:18:23] Daron Shaw: One of the, yeah, one of the things we’ve seen, we’ve been asking a question in the, in the Texas poll over the years about whether you were born in Texas or whether you moved here from somewhere else.

And we’ve now got something like 35, total cases, about 10, 000 of which are transplants. All right. And the 10, 000 allows us and we, we ask a secondary question. Well, where’d you come from? And, uh, you know, a chunk come from California. That’s the standard story that, you know, everybody wants to write about, but a bunch come from Louisiana and Florida after hurricanes, a bunch come from the upper Midwest for retirements.

Yeah. And, and what we found is that where they come from and the reason that they come, you know, Greatly affects where they end up. And it’s, it’s influenced by, or the reasons that they come are very different. Um, and they’re, they’re not unipolar in terms of the, you know, Democratic versus Republican.

They’re, they’re kind of mixed.

[00:19:21] Josh Blank: Well, and to add to that, you know, the, you know, you look at the, the growth of the cities and the counties sort of surrounding the major cities in Texas and you look for what is the source of this population growth. The majority of that population growth is people moving within Texas.

And if they’re moving from somewhere that’s not another major city, they’re moving from actually a pretty. Conservative political climate into the cities. And that’s something else that I think people sort of fail to recognize because everybody wants to Oh, it’s everybody from California. They’re all liberal.

And you look at the point is that well, first of all, they’re not all liberal, right? No chance of that. But also, it’s actually a small share. And really, most of this is about Texans moving around Texas. And um, You know, when you think about that, you say, Oh, you mean that state that continues to vote Republican?

And they say, Yeah, that’s right. You

[00:19:58] Jim Henson: know, and I think, you know, the interesting kind of takeaway in some of these, I’m kind of processing this conversation is also in going back to Latinos for just a beat is, you know, the conventional conversations tend to not account for that. For shifts within these groups and the compositional, you know, and I think that’s a big, you know, the Latino discussion intersects with all of this.

Now, you know, I’ll be interested to see what these final numbers kind of shake out is, but I mean, some of it is the baseline assumptions are just wrong. Right. And in all of this, you know, and I was expressing one of mine that, you know, because you see what’s going on in the urban areas, you know, in your head, you tend to carry around a number of a vote share for Democrats.

It’s probably higher than it usually is. Right. And the same thing with Latinos, you know, you think about, you know, You know, we’ve had this conversation here a bunch of times, but it’s just worth adding. I think that which is, and you kind of think, well, Latinos, Democratic allied group, well, you know, Republicans have been winning 40 percent of Latinos in Texas, if not routinely, certainly frequently.

Well,

[00:21:01] Josh Blank: you know, it’s like, you know,

[00:21:01] Jim Henson: in statewide races,

[00:21:03] Josh Blank: if you were to say like, Hey, I want to, I want to give you, you know, like just a little thumbnail sketch of two voters, right? And one lives on the outskirts of Laredo in a blue collar job with no college degree. And one lives, let’s say, you know, in.

Let’s just say just outside of one of the major metros has a college degree, you know, 25, you know, where do you think they’re going to vote? Just knowing that, you know, you people present, yeah, probably Republican, probably say, okay, they’re, they’re Latino now. Now what? I don’t think that changes anything, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really change the context of that.

And I think that’s one of those things where, you know, in some ways, you know, it’s not like it’s not important, but the Hispanic and Latino identity is being sort of put on a group of people who live, you know, very different lives in very different parts of the state for whom that identity may not be driving their politics.

And I

[00:21:48] Jim Henson: will, frankly, I will die on the Hill and say that says part of the reason we’ve been slow to recognize that about Latinos is because, you know, people were, I’m not reluctant to talk about Latinos going through an immigrant assimilation process. You know, it sounded like, you know, you ought to go back to the fifties and, you know, get back in your Packard and, you know, you know, live your Dawn Draper life if you said that.

But I mean, as the. I mean, I think we’re seeing a lot of people revisiting that let’s let’s talk about the Senate race. Um, Josh, give us the bullet on the Senate race.

[00:22:24] Josh Blank: Yeah. So here we saw a slightly wider gap. We saw Cruz the same 51 percent but we saw already at 44 percent compared to Harris’s 46. So Cruz with a seven point lead as opposed to Trump with five should point out all very much within the margin of error.

I mean, a lot of people have asked me in a couple of days about, you know, the nature of these gaps. And I think there’s some explanations here, but I’d also say, you know, in a technical sense, that, you know, They’re, they’re basically the same estimate, but that’s top of the ticket. I mean, I think what the main sort of underlying piece that you want to just highlight here is the fact that, you know, to the extent that Allred, you know, the explanation for maybe why Allred is trailing Harris, which you’d say, well, he’s less well known than Harris.

There’s still about one in five registered Democrats who fail to sort of register an opinion about him at this point, and that just goes with the fact that, you know, he’s not the presidential candidate. He hasn’t run statewide and he’s. plan. Actually, we’ve thought about it. It’s we’ve said we’ve been

[00:23:08] Jim Henson: willing to put together our own piece of information, no underground media.

Uh, and we want it, you know, to be interesting, to be helpful, and probably safely for people who view things in this new direction. You know local did kind of hear some about how 9 to 5 didn’t seem to follow. Just not this way. This race has been kind of swamped by other stuff and by the fact that neither campaign was really going out of their way to be loud in the early stages.

I mean, the cruise campaign didn’t spend big to define all red. You know real early they are now but they didn’t early and and all red didn’t bolt out of the gate You know to try to overcome that and that’s really clear if you look at if you go to our site texaspolitics. utexas. edu You know, we have nice trend graphics on the fave unfave for all red that really illustrate this clearly just how long people The share of a plurality or majority didn’t have a view of all red, you know, and for a long time, it was pretty persistent, even among Democrats.

[00:24:09] Daron Shaw: Yeah, look, this, you know, the race in Texas is, is very comparable to other sort of competitive Senate races across the country, um, except the parties are flipped. In most instances of these races we’re watching, whether it’s, uh, Casey and McCormick, um, you know, whether it’s, uh, Cary Lake and Gallegos, you know, whether it’s Jackie Rose and Sam Brown in Nevada, you know, what you’ve got is the Democratic incumbent polling about what Harris is polling and the Republican underachieving Trump by three or four points and the betting money is that by election day, it’s You know, the Republican Senate candidates vote will basically be what Trump’s vote is.

In other words, there’s not going to be a lot of ticket splitting. What you’re seeing right now is not a function of, well, you know, I, you know, I like, uh, Trump, but I really don’t like, you know, Sam Brown, uh, or McCormick in Pennsylvania. It’s that they’re just not as well known. And as the election comes by that you’ll find, Oh, that’s the Republican Senate candidate.

And you’ll end up with. Very little ticket splitting. Um, and I think that’s probably, again, flipping the parties, what you see here, which is Cruz’s number is the same as Trump’s number. Um, Allred lags, you know, Harris by a couple of points. Uh, Allred has made up most of the gap based on recognizability and Cruz’s, you know, incumbency advantage.

Uh, I figure by election day, I’d be surprised. Now it’s only a two point gap where Trump’s up five and Cruz’s up seven, but I don’t think there’s going to be much daylight. to make sure that there’s a dialogue between, uh, the Cruz vote and the Trump vote or the Allred Harris vote, right? So, you know, even though it’s a little bit I don’t want to overcook the extent to which Cruz is running a little stronger than Trump right now.

I think these are basically, it’s the same race. The couple of small things, the gender gap is kind of interesting. Um, so on the, on the presidential side, you’ve got Trump up 16 with men and Harris up six with women. So if you take the margins, it’s a 22 point gap. That’s a massive gender gap, by the way, historically.

Um, on the Senate side, Cruz up, uh, 17 amongst men, Allred up two. Um, now the Cruz number is basically the same as the, you know, as the Trump number, right? Trump’s up 16 with men, Cruz is up 17, right? Allred’s running a little weaker with women. Harris is up six, Allred is up two. Is there an argument that, So that’s basically the electing the first female president bump, or is it a function of all roads?

Not quite as well known amongst women. Yeah.

[00:26:40] Jim Henson: I mean, I think that 3 percent drop among women, you know, deficit among, in the difference between the all red and the, and the Harris share could probably be pretty easily mapped onto the no opinions. Don’t knows. I think that’s real. So that’s my spec.

[00:26:54] Daron Shaw: That’s what I’m struggling with.

Struggling is a strong word, I guess, at this point, but, but I guess to the extent Aldred underachieves. Harris. Yeah. Is, do we think that’s a real thing or do we think, uh, you know, basically based on, you know, there’s some number of women who are, you know, say like, yeah, I would like to elect a female candidate.

The Senate doesn’t offer that opportunity. Or is it just a matter of, you know, women not being quite as knowledgeable about, All right in the Senate race. And

[00:27:23] Josh Blank: I should say, you know, just not to be this guy, but like we are trying to divide up, you know, what accounts for, you know, a three point difference or a two point.

Right. And that’s, and this is exactly, and this is where we are right now. I mean, this is the nature of close elections. What else

[00:27:36] Jim Henson: are we going to do? What else are we going to do? But this

[00:27:37] Josh Blank: is what it comes down to is I think, you know, someone asked me today on a call, you know, what’s driving you crazy at this point, which was cute.

It was the end of a long call. Besides you. No, no, he’s great. It was great call, you know, um, but I do think there is this sort of thing. You know, we’re at this point now where because the elections are so close and because we are focused on these, these groups in the electorate and because these groups in the electorate are only going to represent so many cases in any given poll, we get in the situation where we’re having these conversations about what is, what is the relative weight of all reds unknown versus Trump’s potential, you know, let’s say, uh, you know, problems with Women to account for the three point difference.

Yes. And it’s like, yeah, we don’t know. You’re being national par, you know? I mean, yeah. But let lemme say

[00:28:21] Daron Shaw: yes and no. There’s, there’s gonna be over 10 million voters in Texas. Yeah. So we’re talking about 200,000 to 300,000 voters. Right. So yes, there’s a wide airband around that, but, uh. I don’t know. I found the gender gap kind of interesting, possibly interesting, but I, I found the age gap which speaks to this point about, look, younger voters really come to the table with less information, less history, less knowledge.

And Harris is up 20 points with those under 30, Allred’s up seven. Now I think that is both a function of lack of engagement, but also real in the sense that I’m not sure. Albert is going to make up that. I’m not sure Albert is going to get known enough amongst those younger voters to really close that gap appreciably, right.

So, so it’s a way of conceding. I, I agree with the point both of you are making, but I think with certain groups, There’s a real possibility. It’s just a, it’s, it’s a feature, not

[00:29:18] Josh Blank: a bug. And to my point, I’m gonna say this. I don’t disagree with you that there’s not an answer, right? And that we might not be able to figure out what the answer is once we actually have some real voting.

I’m saying with the tools at our disposal, I resist the temptation to make too strong a statement about whether, you know, Would you ever

[00:29:33] Daron Shaw: resist the temptation to make too strong a statement?

[00:29:37] Josh Blank: Well, you’re getting an example now. Not without a caveat beforehand.

[00:29:43] Jim Henson: That doesn’t sound quite as good. So, so, so how about, um, what is the narrative of this race a little bit?

I mean, I think we’ve kind of gotten at this of the Senate race. I mean, because there’s so many interesting things here that, you know, and both races are trying to Both campaigns are trying to create the narratives here, but I mean, when you step back, I mean, there’s a, we were saying, I think on the podcast a couple of weeks when you weren’t here, Darren, that there’s an interesting, I mean, watching Ted Cruz try to run more towards the middle is fascinating to

[00:30:14] Josh Blank: me.

[00:30:15] Jim Henson: You know, and I don’t, and I don’t mean that in like a passive aggressive way. I mean, it’s just, you know, and it’s clearly a campaign tactic. I mean, because, you know, they’ve been encouraging the Ted Cruz worked with Democrats stories for a year and a half. If you go back and look at when those stories first started appearing, it was, you know, the summer of 2023.

So this is not an accident. And clearly, you know, we were treated in the, in the Cruz all red debate. To a cruise name. Dropping Democrats that he’s been working with. 189 And again, on the surface of it it’s kind of obvious, but I’ve been wanting to ask you what you make of that. Well my campaign perspectives, you know, impart,

[00:30:55] Daron Shaw: we’ve got two data points now from which to you pantificate.

2018, you could argue, was an outlier, the Cruz Beto O’Rourke race, in the sense that it was a good Democratic year. Cruz was coming off having, you know, been defeated for the Republican presidential nomination. And you know, he was

[00:31:14] Jim Henson: a And his overall number’s hurt by that. Exactly. If you look at our job approval and favorability ratings, I mean, you can see when that happened.

It looked

[00:31:21] Daron Shaw: like And it wasn’t Democrats. Right. It looked like, boy, this is just a terrible kind of political environment for crews to run in. And he wins by a couple of points. So if you, well, that’s a low watermark, uh, you know, he’ll rebound and win easily. And then you run into 2024, which is, he doesn’t really have.

A lot of headwinds. This is not a great democratic year. Um, you know, you look outside of Texas and I mean, I understand there Democrats are defending more seats, but there’s really very little in play. Um, you know, already, I think is a very strong candidate, but, but there’s a chicken and egg thing going on here, which is, is Cruz weak, um, and therefore attracts better challengers and lots of money, or is it that better challengers?

Want to run against Cruz and a lot of people outside of Texas, as well as inside Texas want to beat Cruz, but I don’t, it’s not even close. There’s no Republican statewide who’s had to run. Anywhere near as hard as Ted Cruz has historically. Right. So I find it interesting in that regard that, that, you know, I think Cruz tells us something about Texas, but I’m not sure exactly what that is.

I was asking, cause I’m kind of in

[00:32:32] Jim Henson: the same,

[00:32:34] Daron Shaw: I’m kind of mulling that same. Yeah. Is it just a Cruz? Um, you know, cause we’ve seen, Jim and Josh and I have seen these numbers for years, which is Cruz’s standing with Republicans is so strong, um, you know, compared to John Cornyn, uh, even compared to Greg Abbott.

Compared to Donald Trump. I mean, he’s, he’s up there. Yeah, he’s

[00:32:53] Jim Henson: in that tier with Trump and Abbott. Yep. Right. And among Republicans.

[00:32:56] Daron Shaw: Yeah. And, and yet, um, he just doesn’t seem to do well with independents. He seems to have these, these image issues and these small. You know, sort of small bore, not in consequence, but small bore mistakes, like during the grid, leaving the state and stuff like that.

And it all adds up to, man, for a guy who is so well known and raises money and, and is a serious campaigner, he doesn’t, you know, he’s not a lazy campaigner. Boy, he seems to be running close elections in a state where Republicans don’t tend to have to face close elections.

[00:33:26] Josh Blank: You

[00:33:27] Daron Shaw: know, so, um, but yeah, I’m, I’m, it’s, it’s a, it’s a marker for the Democrats, I think.

You know, it’s like, boy, look, it does make me wonder, you know, because Cruz hustles and raises money and works.

[00:33:42] Jim Henson: Podcasts.

[00:33:43] Daron Shaw: Yeah. And, and. And we all know that’s a lot of work. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And as, as Jim mentioned, is not dumb strategically. Right. You know, name, we’ve played this game before. Name the position Ted has taken that’s really kind of out of step with the Texas electorate.

Um, you know, we could talk a little bit about abortion, but, you know, I don’t know that Cruz has been Well,

[00:34:04] Jim Henson: and then, you know, they’re not talking about that. Right. Exactly. To the extent they can. Avoid it.

[00:34:10] Daron Shaw: So, I, I find This case, really, really curious, right? On the one hand, you’d say like, boy, it’s a low watermark.

Well, it would be, the real question would be, what if Ted were lazy and didn’t hustle and didn’t raise money? Could the Democrats win that seat? Inclined to think they probably could. Depends on the cycle. Yeah, it would depend on the cycle. Yeah. Um, I think that’s right.

[00:34:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think, you know, you know, just to follow that up, I guess, then I think you’re kind of throwing the, throwing it around.

I mean, you know, I mean, I think the thing that sort of strikes me. You know, about this cycle, two things, you know, one. You know, one of the great things about, you know, being in the position that we’re in and being able to pull so regularly and just, you know, having been here as long as we have, is we can look back and say, Hey, how was, how does that, you know, historic O’Rourke candidacy compare?

And, you know, ultimately when we look at the public opinion data, you know, already has done about as well as O’Rourke. And I mean, he, he didn’t hit the same name ID as early as O’Rourke did, because O’Rourke really did, you know. Do some, you know, earn media, you know, a thing, you know, that’s, you know, that just sort of, you know, gave him a national platform.

That’s just not usual, right? But honestly, even, even if you consider that fact, it’s almost more amazing that all red has basically ended up, you know, kind of in the same spot when we look at, like, we look at the subgroups, when we look at the voters, you know, he’s doing fine with a completely different strategy.

And then that’s the other thing too, you know, a work made a really big, You know, play about going to all 254 counties, he’s engaging Republicans and all this. And you know, I don’t think that’s been all red strategy at all. It seems to really have been to focus on where the Democratic voters are and to, to work on turnout.

And I think that’s why he ran in a lot of ways, you know, but

[00:35:48] Jim Henson: also to commit to a much more, I think. Yeah. Clearly defined ideological placement than O’Rourke ever did.

[00:35:55] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s hard not to look at Allred’s strategy as a reaction to Perceive failings in O’Rourke’s at least from where I’m sitting, right?

I mean I we talked a lot in this podcast about I think one of O’Rourke’s big failures being not taking a position in The immigration debate in any way shape or form and Allred was not going to let that happen I mean in this race that was that was clear.

[00:36:15] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean his introductory ad was him on the border

[00:36:17] Josh Blank: So what’s interesting is like, you know, ultimately end of the day You know, if this is around where the race ends, it could tighten a little.

I think it’s more likely to tighten a little and expand at this point, just based on some of the internal stuff. But, you know, let’s just say we’re sitting here and Cruz won last time by a little under three. Maybe he wins this by five to seven. And what’s interesting is you have two candidates, very different profiles, different approaches.

More or less a similar outcome, right? But the one thing I will note is on the long trajectory of all this man The the period in which republicans had about a 10 to 15 point gap went by like that, right? I mean we were very comfortably with greg abbott winning by 20 points, you know expecting about a 15 point margin at the top No problem, and it kind of seems I mean We’ll have to wait and see what the next cycle is like and whether it’s a democratic or republican year and all these other factors Who’s on the ticket etc, etc But it just seems like this range this sort of, you know, five to ten point range now Won’t This seems to be where maybe we are now.

[00:37:12] Jim Henson: You know, you were saying this, we were having a conversation. You said that yesterday and I was kind of mulling it. And now that you’re saying it again, I mean, I would add to that, that that period may have lasted a little longer than it feels like to you, in part because the Perry election where there were, yeah, three, where there were actually, there were four candidates the year that both Rylander and or Strayhorn.

[00:37:35] Daron Shaw: Kinky and Yeah, and Kinky

[00:37:36] Jim Henson: were on the ballot. And that puts a, an interesting little dense But wouldn’t that make the

[00:37:40] Josh Blank: period shorter of that window? I mean, if you sort of set that aside No, I would

[00:37:43] Jim Henson: make it a little bit longer. Okay. Because, because had, because had Perry run uncontested or without the extra candidates, he’d have won probably by double figures.

Well, that’s

[00:37:52] Josh Blank: what I mean. So then, so then the period of the 10 to 15 point is actually shorter if you sort of say Perry is probably actually a wider gap when you add up those other candidates.

[00:38:01] Daron Shaw: Well, there’s an irony here, and I think we mentioned it. Last time. And that is, there are Republicans who in Texas who are, let’s say, ambivalent about Trump winning in this cycle, who think that 2026.

If Trump is president and Trump is defending a record and an economy, and you get the typical midterm, you know, loss

[00:38:23] Jim Henson: like 2018, yeah,

[00:38:24] Daron Shaw: that, well, that the Republican majority in the state legislature, the house particular could be in trouble. A little harder to defend a little harder to defend. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve gone through some of the numbers and there’s about, there’s about 10 or 11 seats that could conceivably be competitive.

That probably wouldn’t be if Harris were to win. Yeah. Um, and it’s, you know, Republicans doing the, the gaining in the because

[00:38:49] Jim Henson: within that pool of seats, you’re probably looking at in this election, only a few are actually competitive, even though you can say on paper, that gap puts them in a bracket. Yeah.

[00:38:58] Daron Shaw: Right, right. That, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking, Jim. Yeah,

[00:39:00] Jim Henson: you also get, you know, by, by that election, you know, the maps will be a little older, all this movement that we’re talking about all the time that erodes them, you know, changes the terrain of the maps. You know, I mean, just to, you know, to finish up that conversation about the Senate for a beat, I mean, one of the things, and, and, you know, I just jumped in there with that 2018.

I guess what’s interesting to me is kind of an abstract point, and I don’t know that it, I mean, we’ll see if it matters when we see what the numbers are, is just how much this Senate race, you know, in terms of both Allred and Cruz’s strategy is built on analysis of 2018. You know, that probably, you know, and I think I understand the human reasons for this particular in the cruise campaign is really based on 2018, but kind of underestimates just how structurally overdetermined some aspects of that race were,

[00:39:52] Josh Blank: you know,

[00:39:53] Jim Henson: in other words, you know, I mean, 20, you know, You know, I mean, 2018 people want to go like, I don’t think O’Rourke is the main comparison point.

I think the main comparison point is what the turnout patterns that year were, where we saw a big surge in democratic enthusiasm, a point we’ve made in here. Both of you make all the time that the Donald Trump is a turnout machine kind of point that’s not. You know, not quite as operative in this election cycle as you guys were both really laying out well, right?

I mean, I mean, the context of 2018 of this election looks pretty different than 2024, some of the fundamentals. Yeah.

[00:40:30] Josh Blank: And something I just keep repeating to people and it’s sort of like, you know, again, to the point of the comparison is everyone said, well, you know, 215, 000 votes. That’s, that’s awful close to zero in terms of Chris’s advantage.

It’s like, yeah, but you know, what is even further away from that? About the 800, 000 plus votes, the, that I haven’t won by. Right. And the million votes, you know, they came back and won by another elect. I mean, so it’s like there’s a lot more Republican votes. Out there that we know they exist like this and they existed in the same election cycle.

So, you know, that’s why I think this idea just sort of to look at everything from the lens of 2018 and sort of how close Cruz was to losing in a lot of ways. You know, there’s other there’s other points of data. There’s other information out there that might make you contextualize that

[00:41:10] Daron Shaw: made. I’ve been reading repeatedly, including a book I wrote with John Petrosik, and that is there’s this, there’s this odd conventional wisdom amongst the cognoscenti that, boy, if everybody voted in Texas, the Democrats would really be competitive.

I see no evidence for that whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah, the defining characteristic of non voters is they’re less interested, less engaged, less involved to the extent that they’re going to be mobilized. The issues that would mobilize them are going to be determinative. Right. That

[00:41:36] Jim Henson: is perfect, is what I wanted to go to before we Go to our lightning round dealer’s choice is the issue, the issue items and the issue advantages.

You know, when the three of us get together, we have to talk a little bit about issue ownership just to maintain our dork badges. But, but I did think those numbers were kind of interesting in terms of, you know, where the advantages and where the disadvantages are when we look at trust and issues. And in particular, you know, we’ve been talking for the last year and a half over every poll we’ve done.

about, you know, the importance of the economy.

[00:42:11] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:42:12] Jim Henson: And the centrality of the economy and prices. And we’ve unpacked a lot why, you know, there’s a lag when there’s an inflationary period and, you know, prices don’t go back down and people are still mad for a while or noticing for a while. But I’m wondering if there was anything you guys really noticed in that.

I mean, You know, what I know is for the obvious things, which I think the economic gap and trust between Trump and Harris closed a little bit,

[00:42:36] Josh Blank: but

[00:42:36] Jim Henson: just a tiny bit, not enough to bank a lot of, but that’s something we’ve also been seen in some of the national numbers, I think in some places, but also the persistence of the huge gap on abortion, even though that seems to not be Yeah.

And then of course, the persistence of the gap in trust on immigration and border security.

[00:42:59] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:43:00] Jim Henson: Is there anything hidden in there? I mean,

[00:43:03] Josh Blank: Is anything hidden in it? That’s an interesting way to put that. You know, it’s not, it’s not something, I mean, I dare may have a different response. I mean, I think, you know what I would say, the thing that’s interesting, it’s not hidden in there because it’s something we’ve talked about before.

for watching. And so it’s sort of hiding in plain sight, but it just speaks to the advantage that Republicans, I mean, they, in a lot of ways, always have, you know, an advantage, which is they have a much more focused electorate. And what I mean by that is when we ask Republicans, you know, what are the issues they care about, more Republicans are likely to cite the same limited set of issues than we ever see amongst Democrats.

And that is, you know, both, I think, a messaging problem for Democrats, but it’s also a mobilization problem. I mean, to the, it doesn’t mean that, you know, look, I think the, the, the. The result that, I mean, you know, over the, you know, over the entire year plus of election polling that we’ve been doing, uh, on this cycle, I think the, the trust number on abortion in Texas is one of the most striking things.

Again, to see a majority of Texas voters say, no, the Democrat, yeah, it’s shocking. I mean, it’s, it really stands out separate from, from everything. Then again, any, and in a poll in which the majority of those same voters said, no, we want the Republican candidate. So it’s not, you know, like there’s a problem here internally, but the problem, the problem really comes down to it.

But like, is that the number one issue for. For voters. Well, no, is it the number one issue for, for Democrats? Not really. It’s one of among a bunch of issues and the

[00:44:17] Jim Henson: economic, you know, the economic,

[00:44:19] Josh Blank: the economic ones are still in terms of what

[00:44:22] Jim Henson: they say is important in their vote. The economic, the economic issues are still bigger than abortion.

Exactly. And that’s a strike, you know, that’s a real problem. If you’re a democratic candidate,

[00:44:29] Daron Shaw: well, the, you know, just to say the same thing is slightly different way. Um, Harris has closed the gap on some of these critical issues. And, and I, I think you guys are seeing that nationally. Yeah, we are seeing it nationally.

And it’s, it’s something that I think. Um, it’s, it’s, it was evident in her messaging, um, you know, uh, Bruce Mellman, who’s a democratic consultant had a very nice comparison point of the Biden campaign versus the, the Harris campaign. And one of the points Mellman made was that, you know, Biden was talking about threat to democracy, you know, uh, stability, stay the course accomplishments.

And Harris is talking about, um, possibilities and change. Um, and the middle class. When she says ad nauseum, I’m a middle class girl or woman, um, which by the way I find ironic given that both of her parents have PhDs, but okay.

[00:45:20] Josh Blank: Well, that’s a, that’s a whole, that’s another conversation for another day. Well, she also grew

[00:45:23] Daron Shaw: up at an earlier time.

Yeah. Um, be that as it may, and whether or not she worked at McDonald’s or not, um, that’s brilliant messaging. It’s, it’s abs and, and going at, you know, RA, you know, Trump’s gonna raise taxes on uh, your taxes and he’s gonna cut taxes on millionaires and billionaires. We see these in the data. The Republican advan, you asked about lurking things.

Republican advantage on taxes in Texas Yeah. Is seven points.

[00:45:49] Jim Henson: Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah. 48

[00:45:51] Daron Shaw: Trump, 41 Yeah.

[00:45:53] Jim Henson: That is crazy.

[00:45:54] Daron Shaw: It’s, it’s a, that’s a stunning number to me. And overall, you know, look, Trump’s preferred, or the handling advantage is about 11 points on the economy, which is basically kind of, you know, all you need to know about this race in some ways, you know, it’s the number one issue and he’s got a fairly significant point.

But, but nationally, she really has shrunk his advantages on the economy. And nationally, she’s actually shrunk his advantages on border security and immigration. That’s not really what you see in Texas a little bit. Yeah. Um, but that’s made her competitive because she owns a bunch of small bore issues.

Health care, you know, climate change, all abortion, these issues that people don’t say you’re number one. But if you put five, six, seven, eight of them end to end, you get enough Democrats to make you competitive.

[00:46:41] Josh Blank: You know what? That makes me think about something. And maybe this is right or not, but kind of in terms of the lurking and what lurks in those issues and the taxes one really makes me think this is it makes me think about, you know, in terms of what sort of, you know, changes in continuity and what kind of change maybe we’re seeing in the nature of the Texas electorate is, you know, how solid is the Right.

Like, where do they start the election in terms of the share of the vote that they can expect? And when you start to see, you know, an issue like that, that, you know, generally taxes, I think, in particular, is a really great example where you say, like, man, that is an issue that, you know, when you think, like, This is an issue that Republicans generally know.

If you want your taxes lowered, you should probably ask the Republicans to do that, right? Historically. But, the fact that that’s a seven point gap, and that’s the wider gap we’re seeing at the top of the ticket, to me in some ways is, okay, wait a minute. You know, what, you know, is it just that the Democrats have things going their way, and that’s how they’re getting from this kind of, uh, You know, high thirties, maybe low forties, you know, maybe what is the floor now?

And I look at that. I think the floor is maybe a little bit more solid underneath democratic candidates than maybe we’ve seen. Now, let’s see, you know, we’ll do this again, you

[00:47:41] Jim Henson: know, and I think there’s a, you know, explaining that, I think, you know, once we actually see the votes is going to be very interesting because I, you know, I mean, I can hypothesize a bunch of things.

And, but sometimes, I mean, I think some of the things that people don’t like about Donald Trump or that they did. I mean, there’s a lot of things that people don’t like about Donald Trump. But one of the things, I mean, I think from even from a Republican perspective that might make people crazy is like, you know, the way, you know, Trump’s sort of free association and the way he kind of breaks the rules, you know, discursively to be all fancy about it.

But it also reveals some things inadvertently. I mean, I think the way that he’s not been doing it as much lately, although I think he’s still popping up in the speeches, the way He’ll be talking about one of these other policy areas, including the economy, and find some way to link it to immigration or to the border.

It’s almost like, you know, Trump is looking at this, you know, he looks at the same thing and he’s not encumbered by anything. You know, by the, the analytical part of this, he just kind of goes, Oh yeah, this is my issue. I need to pivot to this. And so, yeah, the housing crisis is the fault of immigrants and, you know, but it does speak to something you were raising Josh, but that is,

[00:48:53] Josh Blank: you know,

[00:48:55] Jim Henson: And that is just the touchstone of border security and immigration and all this.

Even a, you know, and maybe particularly as maybe we’re seeing a slight erosion in the advantage is like you’re seeing nationally over the economy, there’s still that consensus point you’re talking to that, that is still a safe harbor. You know, rhetorically and policy wise, I think, um,

[00:49:18] Daron Shaw: small, small, little points just to draw people’s attention to Democrats.

Harris dominates on climate change, but the highest percentage of people saying neither was on climate change. And I’ll bet I haven’t do, uh, let me be honest, haven’t looked at the crosstab by age, but my guess is it’s younger people who say neither of these sides is really doing what they need to. Yeah.

I

[00:49:43] Jim Henson: suspect that’s the case.

[00:49:44] Daron Shaw: Yeah. But anyway, just a small data point.

[00:49:45] Jim Henson: No, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a, you know, cause we did a thing if you use it about, you know, there being something, you know, a S a small D and this was a few years ago, a small degree of, of. Sort of difference by age among Republicans on climate change.

Yeah. I think actually

[00:50:03] Josh Blank: that’s that’s grown I mean so everything I’ve looked at recent when you look at your Republicans under 40 versus I’m sure you’ve probably seen CINO versus Republicans over 40 on climate change. It’s just two different groups I mean the whole we talked about this in the past I mean the idea that you can say climate change doesn’t exist anybody I don’t think till a large percentage of people under 40 is it’s a little bit difficult.

[00:50:23] Jim Henson: Let’s do a lightning round. Guys, what, what, what’s in here either we haven’t talked about or we didn’t adequately address or that was in the poll that you thought was interesting that we didn’t get to, there’s a lot of different things in here that we’ve not touched on. Josh, you want to start?

[00:50:36] Josh Blank: Yeah, sure.

Why don’t I start? You know, we You look

[00:50:38] Jim Henson: eager. I mean, when you’re doing that with your hands, I think Well,

[00:50:40] Josh Blank: I’m ready. Yeah. I’m doing the I think that means I’m doing the little monkey clap here. I’m excited.

[00:50:45] Jim Henson: See, I was thinking seal, but that’s a regional thing. Oh, well.

[00:50:48] Josh Blank: Well, you know, I’ll be close. You know, chimpanzee.

Anyway. Uh, you know, we talked about this on the podcast a couple weeks ago about sort of efforts by state officials to essentially You know, police registration, you know, by the counties. And one of the things we wanted to ask is out of curiosity. Now, again, we talked about the pockets is a lot very clear political reason to try to essentially limit, especially the urban counties from going crazy, registering people having to do with trends and, you know, support for Democratic candidates in those areas.

Having said that, we asked people, Do you support or oppose Texas counties taking measures to encourage courage voter registration on eligible but unregistered counties? Texas adults. We said eligible. We say they’re unregistered. We’re not non citizens. We’re just be clear. We’re very clear that these are eligible voters, right?

Overall, 66 percent of Texans support counties trying to register people to vote. That includes 76 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans. Only 15 percent of Republicans opposed it. And this is just, I think, one of those instances where, you know, this is not, you know, sort of, I mean, it’s just, it’s an example of, you know, nobody was necessarily clamoring.

for the state to clamp down on the counties from registering people. Uh, so just putting that out there, nice little side results.

[00:51:57] Jim Henson: This could be an elite based difference. Could be. Could be a little bit more strategic. How about you, Darren? What do you think? What else? Yeah,

[00:52:04] Daron Shaw: I’m in the tank for the contacting.

Numbers. This is a question that I always, I always want on the poll and everybody, everybody relents, but we did that, but only after making fun of me, um, which is fine.

[00:52:17] Jim Henson: We did not make fun of you at all for that. I can guarantee you when you sent that feedback, Lisa, I said, you know, we should do that.

[00:52:23] Josh Blank: We said, we know we, we understand why Darren would want this, right?

So waiting for

[00:52:26] Jim Henson: this moment. So

[00:52:27] Daron Shaw: the, uh, drum roll, please. As of right now, so this is a poll that was in the field in early October, and we got 43 percent of people saying they had been contacted, not, not seen an ad, not discussed, been contacted by a political campaign organization, um, 43%. So almost 50%. Uh, the breakdown is about, uh, 23 percent said they were contacted by the Democrats.

Twenty six percent by the, uh, uh, twenty six percent by the Democrats, twenty three by the Republicans. So a very, very slight Democratic edge on contacting. Forty nine percent said they’ve been contacted by both. Um, and this is kind of a new question this time around, the mode of contact. Those of you out there who, uh, feel that you’re being inundated with text messages from these political organizations, you’re correct, uh, three quarters of Texans, um, likely voters said they have received a text message.

Encouraging them to vote or to participate about half said they got an email message about a third. So they’ve had a phone call in about one out of every eight, one out of every eight. So they’ve received an in person visit. Now, of course, these numbers are probably exaggerated. They’re self reported, um, you know,

[00:53:33] Jim Henson: likely voters.

Yeah.

[00:53:34] Daron Shaw: Yeah. But they’re really striking. I mean, you know, the notion that Texas is not a battleground, which I think is correct, doesn’t necessarily preclude. A lot of political activity.

[00:53:46] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I think it underlines, you know, what, you know, the, the distinction we’ve been making between, you know, not a battleground, but increasingly competitive and the political world is aware of that.

[00:53:56] Daron Shaw: Right. Yeah. Right. It’s, it’s not like the. Democrats aren’t doing anything in Texas. Let’s put it that way. Right. What about you, Jim?

[00:54:03] Jim Henson: Well, you know, there were, there are other things outside. I kind of want to go back a little bit to one of the items in the Cruz race, in the Cruz Harris race. And that’s because Cruz Allred, or Cruz Allred, sorry, but you’re thinking

[00:54:14] Daron Shaw: about 2028.

I’m thinking about 2028. There you go.

[00:54:17] Jim Henson: Um, I was really interested, you know, we asked this, you know, and it’s a standard thing we do. And often I, you know, I don’t see anything that seems very, Interesting in here, but when we asked the voter, what was that? Tell us a frank admission. Yeah. You know, well, but, but when we ask, you’ve seen it all.

Yeah. When we ask people about, you know, how they place the ideology, the candidates, because we’re seeing like the other thing that I, you know, and I’m obviously just kind of, it’s on my mind, this notion of, you know, where. a little, a little more of an effort to, to reach out to the middle, um, you know, where that was, where that’s been successful and where that’s not, um, you know, and the degree to which how much of this is mobilization and how much of this is persuasion.

I thought these numbers were kind of interesting in that, you know, among, among, you know, and I said Harris, because I want to bring the Harris number into this. Um, When we ask people to say, you know, do you think the candidate is extremely liberal on a seven point scale to extremely conservative, 45 percent of Republicans say that Colin Allred is extremely liberal.

56 percent of Democrats say Cruz is extremely conservative. But then you look at the presidential race. 80 percent of Republicans say Harris is extremely liberal. Only 50 percent of Republicans say Trump is extremely liberal, and I think

[00:55:41] Josh Blank: conservative

[00:55:42] Jim Henson: or extremely conservative. I think there are just multiple stories embedded in that in both races in terms of, you know, Trump as The figurehead of the Republican Party.

Uh, the effectiveness of, you know, the campaign to define Harris, you know, and the efforts in which went, but also, you know, a little bit more drag on, you know, a little less success in defining all red with. With uh, the discussion of, you know, sex reassignment, gender reassignment, and all of this. So anyway, I’m still obviously kind of mulling around in that, but I think those, I’d have to go back and looking in, but those numbers generally don’t look quite like this.

This is, it’s a, it’s a really interesting representation of what the narratives are of the race.

[00:56:27] Josh Blank: Yeah. I think we last asked it in 2016, but I think we were, we were prompted by sort of different different rationales in some way, right? But it certainly is it turned out to be to your point, it’s something I was thinking about this morning, kind of in the preparation of this thing, but these results in particular and sort of, you know, Trump’s kind of more amorphous ideological placement and what’s interesting is one, him as the figurehead of the party, but to potentially is a figurehead of the party in the White House without any sort of electoral constraint.

And what does that do for the party going ahead in terms of, you know, messaging message control, kind of what the party’s about?

[00:57:01] Daron Shaw: Yeah. If we’d have asked, do you think Trump is too extreme? I think we would have got Off the chart numbers with Democrats. Yeah. But, Um, whatever the rap is on Trump, it’s not that he’s some sort of consistent ideologue.

Yeah. Right. It’s just not. And you look at it and it’s the people are, the people are right. He’s got tariffs, you know, he’s, he’s sort of said, I’m not going to pursue a national ban on abortion. I don’t know what you’re talking. He’s disavowed the 2025 project, which is, you know, much more plainly orthodox conservative document.

[00:57:36] Jim Henson: Well, and just his. I was thinking about this when you were talking a few minutes ago about, you know, Trump not being somebody you would expect to really like be the Texas Republican, you know, a little, a little libertine, you know, a little, you know, I mean, this is not, this is not like a buttoned up or, you know, conservative Republican,

[00:57:56] Josh Blank: but, you know, I mean, just to, just to sort of bring a couple points back together here and maybe we can finish it out is, is, you know, I mean, we have asked questions about, you know, The extremism of Trump’s policies in the context of immigration and border security, and that’s where it is interesting, where even at points in time in which, you know, the administration during the first term went, it’s, you know, I think beyond the bounds that we were used to in terms of rhetoric, but also policy around immigration, when we asked Texas voters, especially Texas Republicans, has he gone far enough or could he go further?

Or has he gone too far? Almost none said he’d gone too far. And the balance was being he’d gone far enough, or actually he could go further. And I think the plurality said he could go further. And so on the touchstone issue here for Republican voters in the states, even though he might not be the best Republican, I think this is why I mean, you know, to say, like, I do think there is some logic to Cruz outperforming him a little bit in a state with such a conservative ideological bedrock and a conservative base.

Uh, someone who is so associated with conservatism in Cruz, maybe outperforming Trump with some of those voters. But on this one issue that they all say, this is the issue we care about. This is the issue that we vote on. This is the issue that is the most important in the state. Trump could be even more extreme and he’s actually one of the most extreme candidates in this one space.

So I think, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, yes and no, right? That’s an interesting

[00:59:09] Daron Shaw: idea. I was actually thinking about, as you were saying about Harris on the other side on abortion. Mm

[00:59:13] Josh Blank: hmm.

[00:59:15] Daron Shaw: Which is, look, these are, these are marker issues in some ways, in which, in which your willingness to agree to extreme policies is, is less a reflection of your sincere preferences of, for policy and more an indication of how serious you think the problem is.

Litmus tests,

[00:59:30] Josh Blank: right? We talk about this a lot, right? Yeah. Right.

[00:59:32] Daron Shaw: So, and I, I do see that, I see that on immigration, border security, and I, I think I see it on abortion too, which is we’re, we’re not having a conversation about, you know, where should the limits be drawn? Um, that’s, that’s. You know, and, and Harris, so far as I could tell, has paid almost no price for, you know, whatever, you know, Tim Walz in particular with pretty, pretty extreme positions on the issue so far as we can tell.

[00:59:54] Jim Henson: Well, I’m glad that you guys liked my point.

[00:59:57] Daron Shaw: Good job,

[00:59:59] Jim Henson: Jim. Um, well, guys as always for being here. Uh, you know, more fun than people ought to be allowed to have at work. Yeah, frankly, Thanks to all of you for listening. And, and particularly thanks to our crew here in the audio studio and the liberal arts development lab here at the university of Texas.

Um, as always remember, there are, you know, all the data we talked about. Lots more drill down, lots of graphics and and analysis you can use at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Many different routes if you just go to that URL to all of this data and, and various ways of entering into it. So thanks again for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.